Suppose
that Smith’s pain at t is identical with Smith’s C-fiber firing at t.More specifically, suppose that the token
state or event that has the property at t of being Smith’s only pain
also has the property at t of being his only C-fiber firing.1Assume that this identity is an empirical
fact, discoverable only aposteriori.Then as used by Smith at t, the expressions
‘my pain’ and ‘my c-fiber firing’ will be coreferential, but will not (in any
intuitive sense) mean the same thing.We
must, therefore, explain how a mentalistic expression and a physicalistic
expression could refer to the same event while at the same time satisfying the
following desiderata.

(1)We explain how an identity such as ‘My pain is identical with my C-fiber
firing’ could be a posteriori; i.e.,

(1’)we explain the difference in the cognitive significance of such
expressions as ‘my pain’ and ‘my C-fiber firing’; i.e.,

(1’’)we explain how a subject could be fully rational in believing what he or
she would express by saying such things as “I am in pain” and also in believing
what he or she would express by saying things such as “It is not the case that
my C-fibers are firing,” and, more generally, anything of the form ‘It is not
the case that I am in a state of kind D’ where ‘D’ stands in for a physical
and/or functional description.

(2)We satisfy Frege’s constraint in what I shall call its ordinary version
(OVFC):If x believes y to
be F and also believes y not to be F, then (to the extent that x
is rational) there must be distinct representational modes of presentation m
and m’ such that x believes y to be F under m and
disbelieves y to be F under m’.)2

(3)We satisfy Frege’s constraint in what I shall call its strongversion
(SVFC):We satisfy (1) and (2) by
satisfying the following conditions.

(a)The representational modes of presentation referred to in (2) provide a
rational justification of the subject’s beliefs, intentions, and actions.

(b)The justification is available to the subject at the personal level.

(c)The justification takes the form of a characterization of the way the world
presents itself to the subject or the way the world is given from the subject’s
point of view.

As it is used in the literature, ‘mode
of presentation’ is ambiguous between something on the side of language and
content, such as a description, concept, or some form of nonconceptual content,3
and something on the side of the world, such as a property.4Thus in the conditions above and in what
follows I distinguish between representational modes of presentation (on the
side of content) and nonrepresentational modes of presentation (on the side of
the world).

What
the strong version of Frege’s constraint adds to versions such as OVFC is an
explicit acknowledgment of the justificatory role that modes of presentation in
both senses are required to play. Modes
of presentation are not postulated simply to explain behavioral and/or
functional dispositions--for example, a subject’s disposition to produce the
sound associated with ‘yes’ in response to ‘Are you in pain?’ and that
associated with ‘no’ in response to ‘Are your C-fibers firing?’For this role a difference in the causal
chains connecting the subject’s pain to tokens of the word ‘pain’ on the one
hand and to tokens of ‘C-fiber firing’ on the other (and a resulting difference
in the causal role of the two terms in the subject’s functional economy) would
suffice.But such a difference in the
causal chains and the functional roles associated with different linguistic
expressions is one to which the subject need not have access.Thus, in the absence of some personal-level
manifestation, such a causal difference could not play the justificatory role
for which modes of presentation are slated

Why,
though, should we hold out for a justificatory as opposed to explanatory role
for modes of presentation?The first
reason is that conditions (3a)-(3c) are already implicit in conditions (1) and
(2).Thus a justification of the latter
conditions will provide a justification of the former as well.

Condition
(1) is a given in this context and is accepted on all sides; (1’) and (1’’) are
intended as elucidations of (1).Furthermore, (1’) and (1’’) (and thus (1)) will be accepted by anyone
who takes modes of presentation seriously and thus by anyone who takes Frege’s
constraint seriously in its ordinary version.Moreover, as I shall argue below, condition (2), Frege’s constraint in
its ordinary version, should be accepted by anyone who is serious about belief
ascription.The same argument, which
appeals to the constitutive role of charity and rationality in the ascription
of intentional states, is sufficient to justify (3a) as well.And it is clear, as we have seen, that such
rational justification must take place at the personal level (as (3b)
requires).

To
support the claim that the kind of rational justification in question proceeds
by characterizing the way the world presents itself to the subject (i.e.,
(3c)), we need simply note that beliefs (and such other intentional entities as
intentions and actions) are justified by appeal to other beliefs and intentional
states and other representational contents--including, possibly, nonconceptual
contents.Hence they are justified by
reference to the way the world presents itself or the way in which it is given.But we have already seen that rational
justification is a matter of what is available to the subject at the personal
level.Hence rational justification is a
matter of the way the world presents itself to the subject or the way it is
given from the subject’s point of view.

Condition (3), SVFC, has a
second, related source of support.To
suppose that differences in the modes of presentation required by Frege’s
constraint could consist merely in causal differences unavailable to the
subject at the personal level is to adopt a position that I shall call localeliminativism.Just as the
eliminativist regarding intentionality eschews talk of content altogether in
favor of an explanation of behavior in terms drawn from the natural sciences,
so the local eliminativist (regarding intentionality) eschews such talk in what
we might call the Fregeancontexts (i.e., the contexts in which
SVFC would require the postulation of representational modes of presentation
available to the subject in question).But local eliminativism is not a tenable position.The point of ascribing intentional
content is to characterize the world as it presents itself to the subject,
thereby providing a rational justification of the subject’s beliefs,
intentions, and actions.When we do so I
shall say that we rationalize those intentional states (and to that
extent their subject).In fact,
rationality is constitutive of the project of intentional ascription, as is
evidenced by the constitutive role of the principle of charity in radical
interpretation.5Indeed, it
would be a mistake to think of our commitment to Frege’s constraint and to the
principle of charity as independent.They are more appropriately seen as different manifestations of our
fundamental commitment to the rationality of the subjects of intentional
states.6Local eliminativism
should be rejected in favor of full-blown eliminativism by those who are
skeptical about intentional ascription altogether.Those who are not should hold out for the
higher standard that SVFC entails.

II.THE ARGUMENT FOR PROPERTY DUALISM

I shall now outline the property
dualism argument,7some
points of which will receive further elaboration in subsequent sections.Notice first that although the explanations
required by conditions (1)-(3) call for the rational justification of the
beliefs, intentions, and actions ascribed to the subject, this is not to say
that such contents play no explanatory role.The contents ascribed to such subjects must explain the subjects’ access
to the referents of their expressions.For example, to provide the explanations called for by (1) regarding the
identity statement ‘My pain is identical with my C-fiber firing’ while
satisfying OVFC, the two expressions involved must pick out the objects they do
under distinct representational modes of presentation.And corresponding to these representational
modes of presentation there must be properties (i.e., nonrepresentational modes
of presentation) invirtueofwhich they pick out
the object in question.Moreover, the
representational and nonrepresentational modes of presentation must be
appropriately related; indeed therelationmustbeapriori.That is, the property
must be one that the subject could (in principle) ascribe to the object solely on
the basis of an understanding of the representational mode of presentation in
question, and it should involve nothingmore than is ascribable on that basis.

This
condition on the relation between representational and nonrepresentational
modes of presentation presupposes a commitment to what we might call thin
properties--those with respect to which we know or can infer all there is to
know about their intrinsic (nonrelational) nature merely in virtue of
understanding the predicates that express them. Thin properties, then, confer no empirically
discoverable essence or nature on the objects that instantiate them.8Such properties, of course, are not
necessarily phenomenal properties.Other
types of thin properties include (among others)mathematical properties,
(arguably) functional properties, such as being a telephone, (some) observable
properties, such as being a medium sized object within reach, common sense
properties, such as being a hill or an island, and common sense psychological
properties, such as being angry or brave.Indeed we could say that thin properties correspond not to natural kinds
but to “definable kinds,” were we willing to take a sufficiently relaxed view
of definition.

For
a subject who believed that a fortnight was a period of ten days, for example,
the representational mode of presentation (description) in question would not
correspond a priori to the property of being a period of fourteen days.So it would not be in virtue of this property
of a fortnight that the subject’s term picked it out.9Of course, the route from the linguistic
expression to the referent may involve many representational modes of
presentation, each with its corresponding property.If so, then reading down the path from top to
bottom, each link must be either an a priori connection or an a posteriori
connection grounded in the beliefs of the particular subject in question.And the reason is obvious.The route to the referent must explain how
the subject’s term succeeds in picking out the object in question.

Consider the analogy between the pain/C-fiber
firing example and the Morning Star/Evening Star example. (See diagrams (1) and
(2)).In both cases we have two
linguistic descriptions that are coreferential but not coreferential a
priori.In the case of ‘the Morning
Star’ and ‘the Evening Star’ this is unproblematic.There are two properties corresponding to the
two descriptions of Venus--the property of being the last heavenly body visible
in the morning and the property of being the first heavenly body visible in the
evening--properties that could have been instantiated by different
objects.Thus the fact that one could
fail to realize that a single object had both properties explains how one could
believe--and be rational in believing-- something of Venus under the
description corresponding to the first property (‘the last heavenly body
visible in the morning’) and fail to believe it or believe the contrary under
the description corresponding to the second (‘the first heavenly body visible
in the evening’).

Now
there is no difficulty about the modes of presentation (either representational
or nonrepresentational) that tie ‘my C-fiber firing’ to its referent.The term ‘C-fiber firing’ is connected a
priori with a certain causal role and the causal role (we can assume) is
connected a posteriori (for the subject in question) with the perception of
instrument readings and the like.The
difficulty is with the modes of presentation of the token brain state as it is
given “from the inside” to normal subjects, who determine that they are in pain
without the aid of any special apparatus.There is a problem, however, regarding one of the nonrepresentational
modes of presentation of the token state which is both the pain and the C-fiber
firing.What is the property in
virtue of which one has one’s normal, first person access to such states?In diagram (2) as it stands, the route to the
C-fiber firing goes through the property of being a pain and the property of
hurting or having a certain phenomenal feel.And these are, on the face of it, mentalistic properties.Can we, then, recast the diagram to provide a
route that does not involve such mentalistic properties?It is evident that we cannot.No physical or neurophysiological property
could play the role played by these ostensibly mentalistic properties in
providing a route to the referent.For
any such property, a perfectly rational subject can believe that he or she is
in pain and not believe (or indeed disbelieve) what he or she would express in
using a description connoting that property to characterize one of his or her
internal states.We must then continue
to appeal to a mental property--such as the property of being one’s state that
is hurtful at t--in order to produce an analogue of the Morning
Star/Evening Star example.

But
does the Morning Star/Evening Star example provide the general pattern for a
posteriori identities, or is it merely one pattern among others, an option not
a requirement?The suggestion that the
pattern is optional seems clearly false.Recall that we want to retionalize the relevant beliefs, intentions, and
actions of the subject who believes what he or she would express by saying “I
am in pain” and “MyC-fibers are not
firing.”Or, to put it another way, we
want to say what the subject imagines or believes who is disposed to deny
sincerely the identity of pain and C-fiber firing.And the answer must take the form of a
specification of a possible world.First, suppose there were no such world (and nothing relevantly similar,
such as a partial world or situation10) that was completely
describable without contradiction and that captured what it was the subject
imagined in imagining that pain was not identical with C-fiber firing.Suppose, that is, that every attempt to
describe such a world ended in the revelation of a hidden contradiction.Then the identity would be a priori, contrary
to our assumption.By the same token, a
subject who failed to believe or disbelieved such an identity would be
irrational.Thus we could not , for
example, characterize the content of the relevant beliefs of the subject in
terms of “impossible possible worlds” since such a characterization could not
do justice to the subject’s rationality, but would merely reveal the subject as
irrational.What, though, would
such a possible world be like, given that it could not be one at which pain ≠
C-fiber firing since (by hypothesis) there are none?Such a world would have to be one at which
(intuitively speaking) what the subject would mean in asserting the negation of
the identity was actually the case.This
means that there must be a world in which the properties that are definitive of
the content (for the subject) of the two modes of presentation are not
coinstantiated.

Even
if this is how it works in the case of the Morning Star and the Evening Star,
however, is it clear that it must work this way?The answer is yes. We need properties in
order to characterize the way the subject takes the world to be, since we are
specifying the content of the subject’s belief, not merely something
about its vehicle (such as its functional role).In other words, we are specifying a possible
condition of the world, not merely a possible condition of the subject.We could derive the same conclusion by saying
that we need properties of the world because, as we have already seen, local
eliminativism is unacceptable and because it is the connection between
properties and concepts that gives content to those concepts.

But
if we need properties, is it clear that we need thin properties?Again the answer is yes.If the properties are to provide the content
(forthesubject) of the belief that he or she would
express by saying “Pain is not identical to C-fiber firing,” then their
principle of individuation must be sufficiently fine-grained that they can be
appealed to to explain the difference in cognitive significance between ‘my
pain’ and ‘my C-fiber firing’.Moreover,
it must be fined grained enough to capture and explain the difference in
cognitive significance of ‘my pain’ and any (explicitly) physicalistic
expression, since for any such expression we can imagine a subject who believes
what he or she would express using a sentence of the form ‘My pain is F and it
is not the case that P is F’ where ‘P’ stands in for a referring expression
couched in a purely physicalistic vocabulary.But this is just another way of saying that the property that provides
the content for the subject of ‘pain’ is connected to the subject’s use of the
term a priori--i.e., the property’s obtaining entails nothing more about the
world than the subject could (in principle) infer on the basis of his or her
understanding of the relevant representational mode of presentation.Thus we have the condition that the
connection between the properties and the subject’s expressions must be a
priori in the relevant sense.

Is
it really obvious, though, that there must be an a priori connection between
the subject’s representational modes of presentation and nonrepresentational
modes of presentation (properties) in order to avoid local eliminativism?Consider the alternatives.First, the inferential roles (and their
underlying functional realizations) of the expressions that figure in a
subject’s descriptions are not sufficient to provide their semantic
content.Unless there is something to
take us outside the circle of word-to-word connections, inferential roles,
regardless of how extensive, could never provide more than an uninterpreted
calculus.The system of contents must
contain some demonstrative element, and the question is where that element is
to come from.As we have seen, bare
causal connections to things in the world cannot, by themselves, provide the
answer, since they are connections to which the subject need have no access.

But
if inferential roles coupled with bare causal connections are not sufficient to
provide content what is?A theory of
meaning as use would be no help to the physicalist, since even if mental states
are identified with physical states, the meanings of the physicalistic concepts
will in turn be explained in terms of the contributions they make to our
actions and practices--notions that themselves are mentalistic.Thus, if bare causal connections are
unacceptable because they are connections to which the subject need have no
access, then the explanation of content must involve a type of connection that
rules out any such possibility.And this
is exactly what justifies the claim that nonrepresentational modes of presentation
(properties) must be individuated thinly and that the connection between such
properties and the predicates that express them must be a priori in the sense
defined.

We
could not, then, fill out the analogy between the pain/C-fiber firing example and
the Morning Star/Evening Star example simply by opting for an ostensibly mental
property--e.g., being the state (or token event) of the relevant subject’s that
is hurtful at t--but claiming that it is identical with a
neurophysiological property.Were we to
do so we would not have provided an explanation as to how a rational subject
could believe that he or she was in pain and in a state that was hurtful and
not believe that he or she was in any relevant neurophysiological
state.This is because there is no
logically possible world at which the subject could be in a state that was
hurtful and not be in the neurophysiological state in question.11Thus we could not describe the
subject’s beliefs, including the routes from the subject’s referring expressions
to their referents, in such a way as to satisfy (1)-(3).

We
could satisfy (1)-(3), however, if we supposed that the first order
property of being hurtful (which, we are assuming, is identical with a
neurophysiological property) itself has two second order properties--a
mentalistic property (e.g., the property of involving a certain phenomenal
feel)in virtue of which the property of
hurting has an a priori connection with the property connoted by ‘my pain at t’
and a physical-functional property in virtue of which it could be picked out as
the neurophysiological property that it is.Thus in order to satisfy (1)-(3), we are led to a dualism of second
order properties.And if we address this
problem by identifying the ostensibly mentalistic second order property with
another neurophysiological property, we have no way of avoiding an infinite
regress.

We
can summarize, then, by addressing the claim that Frege’s constraint is
satisfied by the distinction between the two concepts--the concept of a
state that is hurtful and the concept of a neurophysiological state of type
N.On this suggestion, no distinction is
required at the level of properties:We simply have two distinct descriptions and concepts that pick out the
same referent in virtue of the same (thick) property.First, as we have seen, we need to explain
how the subject’s expressions pick out the object in question.Now the property of being a
neurophysiological state of type N explains how ‘my neurophysiological state of
type N’ picks out the subject’s C-fiber firing.But how does this property explain the fact that the subject’s
expression ‘my state that is hurtful’ picks out the same state?It must be in virtue of a different aspect of
this property than the one in virtue of which the physicalistic expression
picks out its referent.Thus the
property of being a neurophysiological state of type N must itself have second
order properties, and unless we postulate a mentalistic property at some higher
order, the threatened regress will occur.

Second,
in order to justify rationally the subject’s beliefs, intentions, and actions,
we have to be able to say how the world presents itself to that subject
(condition (3c)).But to say how it
presents itself to a subject is to specify a condition of the world; it is not
a fact about the subject’s concepts but about the contents of those
concepts--i.e., about what they represent.Thus it will be a fact about the properties of the internal state in
question.And these properties will have
to be individuated finely enough to explain how the subject could be rational
in believing what he or she would express by saying ‘I am in a state that hurts
and not in a neurophysiological state of type N’.

Third,
we have to explain what it is in virtue of which the two concepts--the concept
of being a state that is hurtful and the concept of being a neurophysiological
state of type N--are distinct (at least as regards their cognitive
significance).If it is claimed that
they are distinct merely in virtue of a difference in functional roles and/or
different causal chains to external objects, then we have local
eliminativism.Since, however, there is
nothing special about this local context, there is no principled way of avoiding
eliminativism across the board, and this will seem to most too high a price for
an objection to the property dualism argument.

Suppose
it is admitted, however, that the difference in the cognitive significance of
the corresponding descriptions ‘my state that is hurtful’ and ‘my neurophysiological
state of type N’ for a subject is determined by the properties they
connote.Then it is clear that the
properties in virtue of which such descriptions pick out the objects they do
must be given a priori.In other words,
since the properties in virtue of which such descriptions pick out their
referents provide the descriptions’ (and the corresponding concepts’) cognitive
significance, those properties must be available to the subject solely on the
basis of an understanding of the descriptions in question.Thus the properties connoted will be too
thin to allow the kind of case proposed.That is, they will be too thin to allow a case in which the property of
being hurtful is (unbeknownst to the subject) the property of being a
neurophysiological state of type N and there is no genuinely mentalistic
property not identical to a physicalistic property at the second or higher
order.

III.BOYD’S ANTIKRIPKEAN ARGUMENT

It
is sometimes claimed that the property dualism argument is vulnerable to an
objection of Richard Boyd’s to Saul Kripke’s argument for dualism.12Kripke claims that we can imagine pain
without any C-fiber firing (and vice versa) while acknowledging that we can, or
think we can, also imagine water without H20 even though they are
the same.Kripke argues,

however, that the cases of pain and
water are not parallel.In the case of
water and H2O there is a plausible explanation of our thinking we
can imagine water without H2O when in fact we cannot (since if water
is identical with H2O, there is no such possibility).According to Kripke we

confuse the case in which at some
possible world water exists and H2O does not (which we cannot
imagine) with the case in which at some possible world a liquid other than H2O
plays the role that water plays at the actual world.On Kripke’s account, however, there is no
analogous explanation where pain and C-fiber firing are concerned.For there is no distinction between pain and
the appearance of pain analogous to the distinction between water and the water
role or the observable manifestations of water.As Kripke points out, whatever has the appearance of pain--i.e.,
whatever feels like pain--is pain.Thus,
the intuition that we could have pain without C-fiber firing (and vice versa)
stands as an objection to the identity theory.

Boyd
objects that on Kripke’s account, a possible explanation of our thinking
(falsely) that we can imagine pain without C-fiber firing has been
overlooked.Although there is indeed no
distinction between pain and the appearance of pain, there is an obvious
distinction between C-fiber firing and the way it manifests itself.Thus according to Boyd, we do have an
explanation of our conviction that we can imagine pain without C-fiber
firing:what we imagine is not pain
without C-fiber firing but pain without the appearance of C-fiber firing.And this, Boyd maintains, is exactly
analogous to the explanation of our believing that we can imagine water without
H2O.If the analogy holds, we
could explain the apparent conceivability of pain without C-fiber firing, and
hence the a posteriori character of their alleged identity, without postulating
any mentalistic properties.Thus,
according to Boyd, the fact that we seem capable of imagining pain without
C-fiber firing is no more an objection to the identity theory than is the
corresponding possibility regarding water and H2O an objection to
their identity.

Boyd’s
argument, however, does not supply the basis for skepticism about the original
intuition (that we could have pain without C-fiber firing) in the way that
Kripke’s does for the intuition that we could have water without H2O.Let us consider more carefully the nature of
the alleged confusion on Kripke’s account and its counterpart on Boyd’s.On Kripke’s account the confusion is over the
question whether ‘water’ is a natural kind term or one that denotes

anything that plays the water role.That is, it is over the question whether,
with regard to any possible world, ‘water’ picks out the natural kindthat plays the water role at the actual
world, or, with regard to any possible world, it picks out whatever plays the
water role at that world.However, once we fix the meaning of ‘water’ (as a natural kind term) and
the fact that H2O plays the water role at the actual world, the
source of confusion disappears.Under
these circumstances it is no longer even possible to think we can
imagine water without H2O.This is not so in the pain case.Suppose we make explicit to ourselves that we are using ‘pain’ not
as a

natural kind term, but in such a way
that whatever feels like pain is pain.Imagine also that we make it perfectly clear to ourselves that ‘C-fiber
firing’ is being used as a natural kind term (and not, say, as an operational
concept such that anything that satisfies the standard tests for a C-fiber
firing is one).Even with complete
clarity on these points, we have no difficulty in imagining pain without
C-fiber firing (and not merely in imagining pain without the standard evidence
of C-fiber firing).If this is the case,
however,Boyd’s claim--that confusion
over what we are imagining contributes to the intuition that pain is not
identical with C-fiber firing--does not undermine the Kripkean argument against
the identity theory.For in this case,
unlike the case of water, the intuition remains even when the source of the
alleged confusion is eliminated.Since
it does, the need to postulate different routes to the referent of ‘pain’ (in
accordance with (1)-(3)) provides the premises on which the property dualism
argument depends.

The
general principle to which we appeal in this reply to Boyd’s argument is that
for a true identity statement, if neither of the referring expressions that
flank the identity sign connote (pick out their referents in virtue of)
contingent properties of those referents, the statement cannot be a
posteriori.What we have shown, in
effect, is that when we eliminate the contingency in the way water is picked
out (by specifying that ‘water’ denotes a natural kind and

that the natural kind that realizes the
water role at the actual world is H2O), we eliminate the a

posteriori character of water’s identity
with H2O.Since this is not
the case for the identity statement connecting ‘pain’ and ‘C-fiber firing’,
Boyd’s argument fails.It is
appropriate, then, that we turn to an objection to the property dualism
argument that calls this principle (the so-called Semantic premise discussed
below) into question.

IV.LOAR’S ARGUMENT AGAINST ANTIPHYSICALISM

Brian
Loar’s account of phenomenal states does not address the property dualism
argument by name.It does,
however, purport to address “an antiphysicalist line of reasoning that goes
back to Leibniz and beyond” and of which Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument and
Kripke’s antiphysicalist argument are instances (598).Moreover, (together with a similar

argument of Block’s) it provides the
most sophisticated response available to this class of arguments and one that
includes a detailed positive alternative to the antiphysicalist position.13Let us, then, follow the usual practice in
calling such antiphysicalist arguments conceivability

arguments and consider whether Loar’s criticism
of the other members of this class are effective against the present argument
for property dualism.14

Loar
has both an interpretation of the assumptions behind conceivability arguments
and a refutation of the arguments so interpreted.He has, in addition, a positive physicalistic

account of the meanings and referents of
phenomenal terms such as ‘pain’ which, were it adequate, would undercut any
conceivability argument for the postulation of mentalistic properties.I shall set out Loar’s objections to
conceivability arguments as he interprets them in this section and his positive
views in section V.(It should be noted
that whereas the property dualism argument concerns the identity of token
events, Loar’s discussion concerns the identity of properties.Since in both cases largely the same
considerations apply, I shall refer to the difference explicitly only when
necessary.)

Loar
accepts Kripke’s claim that the phenomenal concept of pain conceives of it
directly and essentially but rejects the conclusion that pain cannot be
identical with a physical property.According to Loar, the inference depends on an implicit assumption:

(Semantic premise)A statement of property identity that links
conceptually independent concepts is true only if at least one concept picks out
the property it refers to by connoting a contingent property of that property
(600).

(Pairs of conceptually independent
property concepts are just those that give rise to a posteriori property
identity statements.)Loar’s objection
to the antiphysicalist position is that “a phenomenal concept can pick out a
physical property directly or essentially, not via a contingent mode of
presentation, and yet be conceptually independent of all physical-functional
concepts” (600).Thus there could be a
true statement of property identity linking a physical-functional concept and a
conceptually independent phenomenal concept such that neither concept picks out
the physical property in question by connoting a contingent property of that
property.In other words, Loar’s
objection simply amounts to a denial of the Semantic premise.

Whether
Loar’s analysis of the antiphysicalist argument provides a fully adequate
account of Kripke’s or Jackson’s position is a question I shall not try to
answer.It would not, however, be an
adequate characterization of the property dualism argument.Loar depicts the antiphysicalist commitment
to the Semantic premise as based on the following intuition, which I shall call
the intuitionoftransparency.

Phenomenal concepts and theoretical
expressions of physical properties both conceive their references
essentially.But if two concepts
conceive a given property essentially, neither mediated by contingent modes of
presentation, one ought to be able to see a priori--at least after optimal
reflection--that they pick out the same property.Such concepts’ connections cannot be a
posteriori; that they pick out the same property would have to be transparent
(600).

I shall defend a version of this
intuition below.But one needn’t accept this
intuition in order to see the force of the Semantic premise.Rather, the Semantic premise emerges (in a
weakened and modified form) as the conclusion of an argument.

As
we have seen, the proponent of the property dualism argument begins with a
commitment to the strong version of Frege’s constraint (SVFC).This involves a commitment to rationalizing
the subject’s intentional states and actions--to providing them with a rational
justification, in part by characterizing the world as the subject
conceives it.This commitment is
constitutive of the project of radical interpretation and intentional
ascription.Furthermore, it involves a
commitment to antieliminativism.This is
obvious where the global elimination of intentional states is concerned but less
obvious where the eliminativism is local and part of an ostensibly
antieliminativist program.

The
argument, then, to what I shall call the Weakened modified semantic premise is
as follows.Assume that ‘water = H2O’
is a true identity.And assume that it
is knowable only a posteriori; in other words, the concepts ‘water’ and ‘H2O’
are conceptually independent in Loar’s sense.Thus there could be a perfectly rational subject who believed what he or
she would express by saying ‘Water fills the lakes and reservoirs’ and also
what he or she would express by saying ‘H2O does not fill the lakes
and reservoirs’.There must, then, be a
possible world--one describable in complete detail without a
contradiction--which justifies this belief.The possible world that
rationalizes and justifies the subject’s beliefs, however, needn’t be one at
which water ≠ H2O.After all, our commitment is to making the subject’s beliefs

rational. (By and large.We can ascribe irrationality, but only
against the background of largely rational relations between intentional
states.)There is no such commitment to
showing that the beliefs are possibly true.If there are necessary truths known only a
posteriori, then a rational subject could form beliefs incompatible with them--beliefs
that would be false at every possible world--and yet be rationally
justified.

But
what kind of world would justify the belief that the subject expresses at the

actual world by saying ‘water is not H2O’?And what kind of world would justify a subject’s
(say Smith’s) willingness to contribute to what is described as “research into
the nature of water” which he believes necessary to sustain all life but not to
contribute to what is described as “research into the nature of H2O”
which he believes is an extremely rare and inert substance, irrelevant to
biological life?Clearly the notion of
worlds at which Smith’s beliefs are justified needs some explanation.There is a sense, after all, in which one’s
belief that a theorem of mathematics is false is justified by a world in which
it is publicly shared by the most prominent mathematicians.The existence of worlds of this kind,
however, does nothing to justify rationally one’s belief, since its falsity is
knowable a priori and hence is, in the relevant sense, irrational.Thus we cannot demonstrate Smith’s
rationality by finding worlds at which his beliefs are true, since there
are none, and we cannot do so by finding worlds at which

they merely seemtrue,
since this is not sufficient for justification in the relevant sense.What then could we possibly hope to find?

It
would be sufficient that there be a world (possibly with different physical
laws) at which the terms ‘water’ and ‘H2O’, though they are tied to
the same (representational and nonrepresentational) modes of presentation as
Smith’s words, pick out two different substances with precisely the properties
Smith ascribes to them.The answer,
therefore, is that we are looking for possible worlds at which the narrowcontents of Smith’s beliefs are accurate or veridical, where narrow
content is simply understood as the content that satisfies (all the relevant
versions of) Frege’s constraint--or, equivalently, the content that fully
captures the cognitive significance of the subject’s beliefs.(We say that the narrow contents are accurate
or veridical rather than true because ‘true’ has long since been co-opted by
proponents of broad content.)Indeed,
this is all we could be looking for.The worlds that demonstrate the subject’s rationality are the worlds
that show that contents which fully reflect the cognitive significance of the
subject’s beliefs could all have been realized.15

Thus,
Smith’s belief need not be unjustified or irrational, even though there is no
possible world at which water ≠ H2O.A world at which ‘water’ and ‘H2O’
pick out different substances with the properties that Smith ascribes to them
will be sufficient.All we need to
assume is that the properties that Smith associates with water--being
colorless, odorless, tasteless, filling the lakes, etc., are instantiated by
some substance other than H2O.16But this is just to say that Smith’s term
‘water’ has its meaning and picks out its referent in virtue of

being associated with properties that
are contingently connected with H2O.17

If
an identity is a posteriori, then, it might seem that there must be contingent
modes of presentation (both representational and nonrepresentational)
associated with at least one of the designating expressions that flank the
identity sign.Suppose, however, that we
consider Kripke’s theory according to which the properties of having originated
from a certain egg cell and having originated from a certain sperm cell are
necessary properties of a person.Imagine an artificial fertilization process which includes a pair of egg
cells named ‘A’ and ‘B’ and a pair of sperm cells named ‘Y’ and ‘Z’.When the process is complete, one of the
researchers involved says correctly that the person who originated from A (call
her Eve) is the person who originated fromZ.But this is an a posteriori
identity linking conceptually independent concepts.(It is an empirical fact, discoverable only a
posteriori, that A was combined with Z rather than Y.)Thus we have a violation of the Semantic
premise (or its analogue for individuals) since the two descriptions in a true,
a posteriori identity statement pick out Eve in virtue of their connoting two
of her necessary properties.And this is
evidently a straightforward counterexample to the Semantic premise, since even
if Kripke is wrong about the necessity of origins for persons, we could define
entities for which the thesis is correct.18The
way of handling the counterexample, however, is also straightforward.In place of Loar’s version we should
substitute

(Modified semantic premise)A statement of property identity that links
conceptually independent concepts is true only if the concepts pick out the
property they refer to by connoting contingently coextensive properties of that
property.

Thus although there is no world at which
Eve lacks either of the two properties connoted by the researcher’s
descriptions, there are worlds at which the properties are instantiated by
other individuals than Eve.Thus the
Modified semantic premise is satisfied and we have an appropriate
explanation--one that satisfies conditions (1)-(3)--of the a posteriori
character of the identityThus we have
the argument for (a slightly modified version of) Loar’s Semantic premise.

Recall, however, that the claim was that
there was an argument for a weakened version of the premise.In what sense is what we have derived weaker
than the premise Loar rejects?Consider
once again the identity ‘pain = C-fiber firing’ and assume that it is
true.Assume also that ‘pain’ picks out
its referent because pain has the property of being hurtful.Suppose now that the physicalistic allows
this point but claims that being hurtful is itself a neurophysiological
property.Does this possibility violate
Loar’s version of the Semantic premise?The obvious answer is yes, since we have a statement of property
identity that links conceptually independent concepts and is assumed to be
true, while neither concept picks out the property it refers to by connoting a contingent
property of that property.But is this
case compatible with SVFC?Again the
answer is yes.It is true that the
situation as described sofar does not explain how a rational
subject could believe what he or she would express by saying “I am in pain” and
what he or she would express by saying “I am in no relevant neurophysiological
state.”But the fact that the situation
described does not yet explain the a posteriori character of the
identity does not show that this aspect of the identity cannot be
explained in a way that is compatible with everything that we have
assumed.The a posteriori character
would be explained if the second order property itself had two different kinds
of third order properties--one in virtue of which it is the neurophysiological
property it is and one in virtue of which it involves the feeling it does.

The
point, then, can be put as follows.The
strong version of Frege’s constraint does not force a dualism of properties
upon us at any particular level.It requires only that there be some level at which there is such
a dualism of properties. Thus the semantic premise for which we have argued is
not Loar’s but

(Weakened modified semantic
premise)A statement of property
identity that links conceptually independent concepts is true only if the
concepts pick out the property to which they refer by connoting contingently
coextensive properties of that property, or contingently coextensive properties
of a property of that property, etc.

V.LOAR’S ALTERNATIVE TO ANTIPHYSICALISM

Loar’s
positive position has two basic components.First Loar holds that we can have true identities like ‘the property of
being pain = the property of being a C-fiber firing’, where the designating
expressions flanking the identity sign connote conceptually independent
concepts and where the identities are therefore a posteriori.And Loar believes that for any genuine
psychological state, it is such an identity that captures the relation between
that state and the subject’s neurophysiological basis.Thus, for example, Loar rejects analytical
functionalism.Second, Loar wants to
maintain that this is possible even though neither of the designating expressions
involved picks out the common referent by connoting a contingent property of
that referent.

How
does Loar reconcile these two claims?According to Loar, phenomenal concepts are type demonstratives--hence
they pick out their referents directly.And Loar has an answer to the critic who says that

if the phenomenal concept is taken to
discriminate some physical property, it does so via a phenomenal mode of
presentation . . . the phenomenal concept does not pick out a physical state nakedly
. . . But that conflicts with your assertion that phenomenal concepts refer
directly, with no contingent mode of presentation (604).

His response is to say that phenomenal
concepts have two kinds of noncontingent modes of presentation.

(1)A phenomenal concept has as its mode of presentation the very phenomenal
quality that it picks out (604).

(2)Phenomenalconcepts have “token
modes of presentation” that are noncontingently tied to the phenomenal
qualities to which those concepts point (604).

By (2) Loar apparently means that
particular (token) feelings of pain can focus one’s conception of the type of
feeling to which those token feelings belong.Fundamentally, then, Loar’s reply concerns phenomenal qualities or
properties, and his claim is that the physicalisticcan say exactly what the antiphysicalist
would say--that the phenomenal property (which is a physical-functional
property) picked out by a phenomenal concept is its own mode of
presentation.As Loar says “the idea
that one picks out the phenomenal quality of cramp feeling by way of a particular
feeling of cramp . . . is hardly incompatible with holding that the phenomenal
quality is a physical property” (604-605).And he adds that “the mainpoint
is by now more than obvious.Whatever
the antiphysicalist has said about these cases the physicalistic may say as
well” (604).

Loar’s
basic strategy is to point out that the antiphysicalist wants to say that there
is no distinction between the phenomenal quality and its mode of presentation
and to ask why the physicalistic should not say exactly the same thing.The point that this obscures, however, is
that the physicalistic and the antiphysicalist have radically different reasons
for making what is only superficially the same claim.The antiphysicalist makes this claim on the
basis of what we might call the acquaintancesenseofdirectreference.The account is
this.Visual sense-data (to take the
clearest and most carefully worked out example), like other modes of
presentation, are postulated to explain and describe the way the world presents
itself to the subject.Thus visual
sense-data have all and only the visual properties that seem to be
instantiated.If Neo hallucinates a
woman in red, then there is no physical object of his visual perception that
explains the character of his visual experience.However, there is, on this view, a mental
entity--a portion of his visual field, say--that actually has the shape and
colors that seem to occur in the actual world.

Moreover,
in line with the assumption of a strong analogy between one’s visual field and
such pictorial media as paintings and photographs, such pictorial properties
are assumed to exhaust the properties of sense-data.Unlike a table, but like a picture of a
table, the corresponding visual sense-datum has no hidden sides.Sense-data have all the properties they seem
to have and they have only those properties; we cannot be mistaken in thinking
a visual sense-datum has a property of the appropriately pictorial sort, and
none of their properties go unnoticed.Thus we explain the way the world presents itself visually in experience
by postulating a special class of mental objects that actually have the visual
properties that the world seems to instantiate.And we should notice explicitly the analogy between sense-data and the
primarily descriptive Fregean modes of presentation with which we have been
concerned.Both are intended to
characterize the world as it presents itself to the subject in order to justify
rationally the subject’s beliefs, intentions, and actions.

These
characteristics of sense-data make it clear why they were (and ordinary objects
were not) appropriate referents of Russell’s logically proper names.Russell appealed to definite descriptions to
provide the representational modes of presentation necessary to solve the Frege
problems that arise for the use of ordinary proper names in a range of
contexts, including a posteriori identities.In such examples as ‘Hesperus = Phosphorus’ the difference in cognitive
significance between ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’, the fact that one could be
perfectly rational in believing what one would express in saying ‘Hesperus is F
and Phosphorus is not F’, and the fact that the identity is not a posteriori
are all explained by the fact that ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ are associated
with different descriptions (e.g., as above, ‘the first heavenly body visible
in the evening’ and ‘the last heavenly body visible in the morning’
respectively).As Russell certainly
recognized, however, this cannot be the whole story.If every referring expression got its
connection to the world by being associated with a definite description, we
would be caught in another infinite regress.And such a regress would clearly be intolerable; we would never get
outside the circle of language-to-language connections to establish a
connection between language and the world.

Such
a regress is halted, on Russell’s account, by the existence of logically proper
names--that is, designating expressions whose only semantic function is to pick
out their referents directly, without the mediation of descriptive
content.And postulating sense-data as
the referents of these logically proper names was a move ideally suited to
bring this regress to a halt.First,
since the sense-data in question are visual in nature, their connection to
objects in the external world--sometimes alleged to involve a natural relation
of resemblance--is radically different from that of linguistic
expressions.Thus, because they
introduce no further linguistic or descriptive content, they allow us to break
the circle of language-to-language connections.19

Second,
because like the images in paintings and photographs they have no hidden sides,
they are their own modes of presentation.Therefore they stop another potentially infinite regress--this time of
modes of presentation in general.

Third,
given that logically proper names refer to sense-data, there are no a
posteriori identities involving such names.Since there is no distinction between sense-data and their modes of
presentation, they are not presented in virtue of any contingent properties
that might have been instantiated by something else.Thus there is no possibility that two routes
to the referent that in fact converge might have picked out different objects
and hence no possibility of an a posteriori identity.And this is exactly what we find.If we think we refer directly to our own
current sense-data, it seems obvious that we know whether we refer to two
different images or to the same one twice.Moreover, this would be true of anything to which we could refer
directly in the acquaintance sense.(And
notice that this is precisely the sort of transparency that Loar disparages and
that I claimed earlier that we would see emerge as the conclusion of an argument.Nothing I say, however, commits me to the
existence of visual sense-data, as I shall make clear below.)The result is that logically proper names
referring to sense-data could be used by Russell (in conjunction with his
theory of descriptions) to solve Frege’s problems while terminating what would
otherwise be an infinite regress of descriptive contents.And Russell did so by appeal to a class of
entities that raised no new Frege problems of their own.20

Of
course, as I have argued elsewhere, visual sense-data as understood by Russell
do not exist.21But what is
crucial in the present context is Russell’s strategy for reconciling direct
reference with a solution to the relevant Frege problems:his limiting such direct reference to objects
that are nothing over and above their modes of presentation.And there is nothing in my arguments against
visual sense-data to prevent our treating pains and/or their phenomenal
properties in Russell’s way.That is,
there is nothing to prevent our supposing that they, like visual sense-data
according to Russell, are nothing over and above their modes of
presentation.And this, of course, is
exactly what we do normally suppose.We
assume that at least in one sense of ‘pain’ or ‘hurts’, we only experience pain
and it only hurts as long as we notice it and that if we believe that it hurts
we cannot be mistaken.

The
upshot is this.The antiphysicalist has
a story to tell about how pains, understood as irreducible mental entities
analogous to visual sense-data, could be nothing over and above their modes of
presentation.Thus the antiphysicalist
can explain direct reference to pains, so understood, without leaving any
relevant Frege problems unsolved.Loar
makes what are superficially the same claims:that reference to phenomenal properties is direct and that phenomenal
properties are their own modes of presentation.And on this basis he claims that whatever the antiphysicalist can say,
the physicalistic can say as well.But
the antiphysicalist and physicalistic claims, though they are couched in the
same language, are radically different.When Loar says that reference to pains or to phenomenal properties is
direct and that they are their own modes of presentation, what he means is the
following.The referring expressions
that pick them out do so in a way that is unmediated by descriptive
content.Thus the expressions do not
connote properties of those phenomenal properties or pains.There will be a causal chain in virtue of
which the linguistic expression is connected with its referent, but the
connection is not mediated by representational or nonrepresentational modes of
presentation distinct from the referent itself.There is in this account no counterpart of the antiphysicalist’s claim
that pains or phenomenal properties are nothing over and above the way they are
given to the subject from the first person or subjective point of view.

What,
then, is the conclusion?The problem for
Loar is that ordinary demonstratives used to pick out ordinary objects (and
not, for example, sense-data) do raise Frege problems--even in cases
where it is clear that the subject has no access to a descriptive expression
that could replace the demonstrative in singling out the referent.In the two tubes problem, for example, David
Austin imagines a subject who, capable of focusing his eyes independently,
looks with each eye through a separate tube at a red screen before him.Since he cannot tell exactly how the two
tubes are oriented, he wonders whether “that (referring to the red circular
area that he is in fact seeing with his left eye) is identical with that”
(referring to the circular area that he is in fact seeing with his right
eye).These descriptions of the circular
areas, however, are unavailable to the subject.This is because he cannot tell which area is seen with which eye--either
because his ability to focus his eyes independently means that there is no
unified visual field, or because he believes that he may suffer from a
condition in which objects seen with the left eye appear on the right and vice
versa.22Thus even cases in
which a demonstrative reference is irreplaceable with an identifying
description raise Frege problems.

It
follows that even cases of demonstrative reference to ordinary objects that are
not via identifying descriptions are not direct in the sense in which reference
to a sense-datum using a logically proper name would be.In contrast to the case of acquaintance,
ordinary demonstrative reference, whether or not we call it direct reference,
requires, as the existence of the Frege problems demonstrates, representational
and corresponding nonrepresentational modes of presentation in order to satisfy
SVFC and avoid local eliminativism.Thus
Loar’s talk of direct reference does nothing to show how we could do without
representational and nonrepresentational modes of presentation in cases such as
these, unless we were willing to pay the cost and embrace the eliminativist
option.

Furthermore,
the physicalistic cannot make sense of the idea that a neurophysiological state
is its own mode of presentation.At best
the physicalistic could say that some aspect of such a state provides
its nonrepresentational mode of presentation, but in this it is like any other
objective entity.As such it is
available from any number of points of view, and there are an indefinite number
of aspects of the state to which the subject of the pain has no access.Thus there is no counterpart of the
assumption that pains have only the properties they seem to have or of the
assumption that we cannot be wrong in ascribing them the phenomenal properties
we do.As a result, the possibility of a
posteriori identities arises (as it doesn’t for sense-data) and with it the
possibility of Frege problems generated by the fact that different routes can
converge on the same referent in ways that can be established only by empirical
investigation.

The
conclusion, then, is that Loar’s strategy fails.The physicalistic cannot say that our
reference to pain or to phenomenal properties is direct in the same sense in which
the antiphysicalist makes this claim.When the antiphysicalist says this, he or she means that our normal
access to our own pains or phenomenal properties is via Russell’s notion of
acquaintance.And, as we have seen, this
approach is compatible with SVFC.When
the physicalistic says that our access is direct, this means merely that there
is no descriptive modeof
presentation of the state or property.But appealing to this fact to describe the mode of presentation of the
physical property alleged to be identical with the characteristic feeling of
pain involves the physicalistic in a dilemma.Assume that there is a representational mode of presentation available
to the subject.(If not, if there is
just a causal chain or process, then we have local eliminativism.)Then either the pain and the phenomenal
properties are nothing over and above the mode of presentation and we have
antiphysicalism or this is not the case and we lack a solution to the Frege
problems.And the suggestion that there
might be some other mode of presentation (besides descriptive, causal, and via
acquaintance) involves exactly the same dilemma.If the referents we pick out in virtue of
such alternative modes of presentation are nothing over and above their modes
of presentation, we have antiphysicalism, and if not, we have the Frege
problems (and hence the property dualism argument) all over again.Thus I conclude that Loar’s reply cannot be
made to work.

VI.CONCLUSION

This
account of the property dualism argument is an expansion of the version in
“Curse of the Qualia.”Though the
current version adds substantially to the earlier one--particularly as regards
the role of Frege’s constraint, antieliminativism, and the threat to
reductionists of an infinite regress, the conclusions only in this:While both versions of the argument yield the
same disjunctive proposition, I have opted for a different disjunct in each
case.The disjunction is that either
there are irreducibly mentalistic properties or the connections between
mentalistic and physical and/or functional concepts are conceptual and a
priori.Since the second disjunct does
not seem even remotely plausible for qualitative concepts and physical concepts,
this comes down to the following:Either
there are irreducibly mentalistic properties or analytic functionalism is
true.In “Curse of the Qualia” I opted
for the latter alternative.This now
strikes me as less plausible than it did, and in this paper I have simply
ignored analytic functionalism as a live option.Those who hold this view are entitled to
point out that nothing I have said here provides a substantive reason for
abandoning it.

If
the property dualism argument is correct, then, (and the assumption about
analytic functionalism is justified) we are committed to the existence of
irreducibly mentalistic properties.(Nor
would such properties supervene on the physical properties.)Does this mean that we must take such
qualitative properties as being a pain, hurting, feeling like that, and
so forth as beyond the reach of any sort of explanation or analysis?The answer is no.The property dualism argument requires
mentalistic properties but not necessarily qualitative properties.Thus it is compatible with an attempt such as
Michael Tye’s to reduce the qualitative to the intentional.23And the implausibility of analytic
functionalism does not automatically translate into an argument for the
implausibility of such an intentionalistic reduction.This translation would only be available if
the proponent of an intentionalistic reduction were also committed to an
analytic reduction of the intentional to the physical or the functional.In the absence of this further commitment,
however, there is no reason why we could not treat such so-called qualitative
states as pain as representational and attempt to illuminate their ostensibly
qualitative character on the basis of their representational properties.(I have given a sketch of a nonreductive account
of intentionality and consciousness elsewhere.)24

The
final issue is the relation of the property dualism argument to other recent
conceivability arguments--Jackson’s knowledge argument and Kripke’s modal
argument--and to Joe Levine’s explanatory gap argument.25Though some are inclined to see these
arguments as standing or falling on the basis of the same considerations, a
number of reasons suggest that among conceivability arguments and those that
appeal to similar assumptions, the property dualism argument has a special
status.Jackson and his critics, for
example, seem to have reached an impasse over the question whether a subject
with a complete knowledge of all the physical facts but no experience of colors
acquires a new piece of knowledge or merely a new set of skills when she first
encounters a red object.26And although there are important objections to those critics of the
knowledge argument who claim that only know how and not factual knowledge is
acquired, these objections have not proved conclusive.27Moreover, in the light of the property
dualism argument, we can see why this should be the case.The issue between Jackson and his critics is
whether the chromatically deprived subject gains a new belief content in her
first encounter with a red object.And
it is plausible to think that the ultimate court of appeal on issues of this
sort resides in the principles of radical interpretation that constitute and
govern all content ascription.That is,
the ultimate appeal is to appropriate versions of the principle of charity and
of Frege’s constraint, to the principles of theoretical and practical
rationality, and so forth.And a typical
instance of such an appeal would be the claim that the subject who opts to
contribute to research described as “water research” and not to equally
important projects described as “H2O research” must have two modes
of presentation of water--i.e., two distinct contents under which the same
object figures in the subject’s beliefs.By its very nature, however, the example that supports the knowledge
argument seems to rule out an appeal to first principles where content is
concerned.The general form of such an
appeal is that content is required to rationalize what would otherwise be
interpreted as irrational or self-defeating behavior.However, precisely because Jackson’s subject
has access to all the physical facts--including the facts about when and why
normal subjects would use the color vocabulary and which such uses would be
correct--she will never be guilty of the kind of apparent practical
irrationality that would ground an appeal to Frege’s constraint or to the
principle of charity.Thus Jackson’s
argument is constructed in such a way as to preclude the appeal to first
principles that provides the most important ground for the ascription of
content in the context of the property dualism argument.

As
a candidate for being the most fundamental argument in this area, Levine’s
explanatory gap argument seems equally problematic.Levine himself makes a case that the
explanatory gap argument has this fundamental status when he attempts to
explain the conceivability of a creature’s occupying any given physical or
functional state and its lacking

any sort of qualia in terms of the lack
of an explanation of the nature of the qualia in physical and functional
terms.

It is because [my italics] the
qualitative character itself is left unexplained by the physicalistic or
functionalist theory that it remains conceivable that a creature should occupy
the relevant physical or functional state and yet not experience qualitative
character.28

But this surely gets things
backwards.Even if we had an explanation
of the qualitative character of pain, say, in physical or functional terms, it would
remain conceivable that a creature should have the physical or functional
states in question while lacking the qualitative experience and have the
qualitative experience while lacking the physical or functional states in
question--or indeed any relevant physical or functional states whatsoever.This is so for the same reason that it is
conceivable that H2O should fail to produce the macro-level
properties of water on Earth and that those macro-level properties might exist
on the basis of a different microstructure or none at all.There are, after all, possible worlds at
which the laws of nature are different, and logical or conceptual possibility
is what ultimately governs the relevant distinctions between what is
conceivable and inconceivable, a priori and a posteriori.It is the lack of an analysis of
qualia in terms that would make it a suitable explanandum of a causal/physical
explanation that is crucial, and not the lack of an explanation itself.Thus in

this domain it is conceivability that is
basic, and this fact is amply reflected in the structure of the property
dualism argument.

Finally,
although Kripke’s modal argument seems most closely related to the property
dualism argument, even here the latter seems to provide some advantage.In its appeal to Frege’s constraint and to
antieliminativism, the property dualism argument supplies a grounding for what
some of Kripke’s critics (e.g., Loar) have seen as unmotivated and unsupported
intuitions.By locating the basic issues
in the theory of the ascription of content

rather than in the logic and metaphysics
of modality, the property dualism argument grounds the intuition of
transparency and a version of the Semantic premise in a way that Kripke’s
discussions thus far have not.Thus in
this domain it is the property dualism argument with which I believe
physicalists will have to come to terms.

If
the property dualism argument is understood as a conceivability argument,
however, it is likely to be objected thatconceivability is not always a reliable guide to possibility and that
there has been no argument that it is so here.But this would be to misconceive the nature of the argument.The argument is that if pain were identical
with C-fiber firing this identity would be a posteriori and one could be
rationally justified in believing something that one would express in a
statement of the form ‘Pain is F and C-fiber firing is not F.’But making coherent sense of the possibility
of such a rationally justified belief requires that we postulate either
irreducibly mentalistic states or of irreducibly mentalistic properties of
first or higher order. And we are committed to the existence of the entities
required to make coherent sense of our other commitments.Thus we are committed to the existence of
irreducibly mentalistic properties.29

STEPHEN L. WHITE

Tufts University

Notes

1.On such a supposition, the event of Smith’s being in pain at t--i.e.,
the event of his C-fibers firing at t--is what Donald Davidson has
called an unrepeatable or dated particular.See “The Individuation of Events,” “Events as Particulars,”and “Eternal vs. Ephemeral Events,” in his EssaysonActionsandEvents (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 163-203.For the view of events as property
exemplifications see, Jaegwon Kim, “Events as Property Exemplifications,” in
Myles Brand and Douglas Walton eds., ActionTheory
(Dordrecht/Boston:Reidel, 1976), pp.
159-177 and Alvin Goldman, ATheoryofHumanAction
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall,
1970), Ch. 1.This alternative view of
events is addressed in the discussion of property identities in sections IV-V.

4.Schiffer’s version of Frege’s constraint suggests that modes of
presentation belong on the side of language and content.Brian Loar sometimesmeans by ‘modes of presentation’
representations such as descriptions or concepts and sometimes the things
connoted or expressed by such representations, such as properties.See Loar,“Phenomenal States,” in Ned Block,
Owen Flanagan, and Guven Guzeldere eds., TheNatureofConsciousness
(Cambridge:MIT Press/Bradford Books,
1997), pp. 597-616, at 600.(Page
references in the text are to this paper.)

6.See my “Narrow Content and Narrow Interpretation,” TheUnityoftheSelf (Cambridge:MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1991), Ch. 2.Condition (3) and the subsequent explanatory remarks constitute, in
effect, a commitment to a thoroughgoing internalism in one important sense of
the term--a sense motivated by the kinds of intuitions that give rise to
Frege’s constraint and such notions as internal justification and the subject’s
point of view.

8.Although there is an obvious connection to a proposal broached by Alvin
Goldman according to which “properties Ø and Ø’ are identical
just in those cases where they are expressible by synonymous expressions” [ATheoryofHumanAction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall, 1970), p. 12], there is no
commitment on the present account to a notion of synonymy, a concept likely to
yield controversial results in those cases where it is needed most.Indeed, there is no commitment to a notion of
meaning (in the sense of a systematic semantics for all the relevant terms)
shared by all competent speakers of a language.What is at issue is not the meanings of the relevant terms, but the
modes of presentation under which individual speakers hold their beliefs about
the referents of those terms--in short, the requirements imposed by Frege’s
constraint.In this respect the appeal
to thin properties differs in its motivation from DavidLewis’s appeal to properties as classes of
possibilia in order to satisfy the requirements of a systematic semantic theory
of a language.See “New Work for a
Theory of Universals,” in his PapersinMetaphysicsandEpistemology (New York:Cambridge
University Press, 1999), pp. 8-55, at16-17.

9.For this kind of example see Tyler Burge, “Belief and Synonymy,” JournalofPhilosophy 75 (1978), 119-138.For the subject who is mistaken about the meaning of ‘fortnight’ the
route might go through the description ‘the period referred to by ‘fortnight’
in this community’.Nothing, here
however, turns on the account of parasitic reference.

11.The relevant notion of possibility here is logical or conceptual
possibility--describability without contradiction.The appeal to logical possibility, however,
must be understood correctly.As Kripke
has argued, possible worlds are ways the actual world could have been.Moreover, in moving from the actual world to
its possible alternatives, we keep our language fixed.In the present context this means that if the
property of being hurtful, say, is identical with some neurophysiological
property, then there is no logically possible alternative to the actual world
at which they are distinct.Thus the
possible worlds with which we are dealing are genuinely possible and not merely
epistemologically possible.They
correspond, then, with what at least some have meant by “metaphysically
possible worlds.”

14.In the conclusion I shall distinguish two different forms that
conceivability arguments might take.

15.See my account of notional content in “Narrow Content and Narrow
Interpretation.” This appeal to narrow content plays a role analogous to that
of Chalmers’ appeal to what he calls the “primary intention” of a
proposition.See David Chalmers, TheConsciousMind:InSearchofaFundamentalTheory (New York:Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 57-65.Chalmers’ account of primary intentions is
itself similar to an earlier account of mine of narrow content in “Partial
Character and the Language of Thought,” PacificPhilosophicalQuarterly
63 (1982) 347-365, reprinted as Chapter 1 of TheUnityoftheSelf.The difference between the
two accounts turns on whether narrow content should be represented in terms of
a certain kind of two-dimensional matrix or the diagonal of that matrix.This difference needn’t concern us here,
since the more recent account of notional content seems preferable to either in
taking Frege’s constraint as constitutive of narrow content.(Though the nonequivalence of my two accounts
is obvious, some readers have evidently been misled by my failure to make this
point explicit.See McLaughlin, “Review
of TheUnityoftheSelf.”)So long as an account of narrow content
satisfies Frege’s constraint, however, nothing in the present context depends
on the details.

16.The question may arise why, in addition to the thin properties and the a
priori connection between representational and nonrepresentational modes of
presentation to which we appealed in the discussion of the Morning Star/Evening
Star example, we need a notion of narrow content.The answer is that in the Morning Star/Evening
Star case and its pain and C-fiber analogues it is assumed that the subject
refers successfully to an actual object.In the general case in which we rationalize a subject’s intentional
states, however, we cannot make this assumption.

17.It may well be incompatible with the basic laws of physics that a
substance other than water could have all of its observable or macro-level
properties or that water could have failed to have them.But even if it is, the basic laws of physics
are not themselves conceptually necessary.Thus in the relevant sense of ‘possible’ it is not merely the case that
there is a possible world in which the substance with the macro properties of
water is not H2O.There is
also a possible world in which H2O does not have the macro-level
properties of water at the actual world.

18.I am grateful to Ned Block for pointing out the significance of this
example.

20.These semantic arguments, which are completely independent of any prior
epistemological commitments, were never (to my knowledge) presented explicitly
by Russell.As R. M. Sainsbury’s
discussion indicates, however, there are good reasons to suppose that Russell
was committed to all of the premises of the arguments advanced above.SeeRussell
(London:Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1979), pp. 76-88, esp. 87-88.

21.“Consciousness and the Problem of Perspectival Grounding,” presented at
the Workshop on Consciousness Naturalized, Certosa de Pontignano, Siena, May
28, 1999 and “Subjectivity and the Agential Perspective,” forthcoming in Mario
de Caro and David Macarthur eds., NaturalismandItsProspects,
Harvard University Press.

22.In addition to Austin’s discussion of the two tubes problem, see his
discussion of Sarah, the pharmacist-astronaut, both of which are found in What’stheMeaningof“This”? (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 20-25
and 42-51.